> Second, the semiautomatic washing machines themselves may have taken some of the drudgery out of clothes washing, but they did not really save time. Scott explains that the person washing “had to manually feed each item of clothing through the powered wringers between each part of the cycle.” You could not just close the door and turn the machine on and leave.
Second? Why not first? This could be the entire article. Why would I buy a machine that doesn't actually provide meaningful value? Everything else in this article is ragebait for HN.
It still seems like that would save a ton of unpleasant work, if not time.
I own a pasta machine where I have to hand-feed the pasta sheets, and it's so much easier and more fun to make pasta compared to rolling by hand, even though it doesn't save me any time.
Simply feeding an item into a wringer is easy and a bit meditative; wringing by hand is a lot of work and a lot of wear on your skin.
My grandmother had a washing machine with a manually fed electric wringer until she moved into assisted living. It would've likely been no newer than the immediate postwar era, as that's when she moved into the house she lived in. I doubt she would've owned it earlier (steel being needed for the war).
It was a bit of a production to do laundry with it. I can buy the argument that it was tough to sell machines that weren't fully automated. It looked fun as a kid, but I can't imagine it's fun for more than a load or two!
Edited to add: they lived north of the Mason-Dixon in an area with very few Black residents.
When I was young I did summer work for a woman who described how difficult it was getting to find a new washer with a wringer, which if you are not familiar is a pair of rubber rollers above the washtub to really squeeze out the water. This was a wealthy woman who just couldn’t change her workflow.
From what I understand, the dryer is a bigger concern. In the UK and in Europe, you are already ahead of the curve by reducing use of the electric dryer.
It just takes 5 seconds to think about the treatment of white workers in coal mine to debunk this entire article. My grandmother was a middle class family in mid 20th century and still preferred to hand wash the families cloths until arthritis took over.
My great-grandfather died in a coal mine so, I have an intimate understanding of your argument. Intimate enough to tell you that you did not understand the article.
Second? Why not first? This could be the entire article. Why would I buy a machine that doesn't actually provide meaningful value? Everything else in this article is ragebait for HN.
I own a pasta machine where I have to hand-feed the pasta sheets, and it's so much easier and more fun to make pasta compared to rolling by hand, even though it doesn't save me any time.
Simply feeding an item into a wringer is easy and a bit meditative; wringing by hand is a lot of work and a lot of wear on your skin.
It was a bit of a production to do laundry with it. I can buy the argument that it was tough to sell machines that weren't fully automated. It looked fun as a kid, but I can't imagine it's fun for more than a load or two!
Edited to add: they lived north of the Mason-Dixon in an area with very few Black residents.